Poll

Opinion

Elections seem to bring out the best and the worst in people. On the positive side, the interest in public service and scrutiny of government services re-energizes us and provides the impetus to update and improve services. On the negative side, the emotions of campaigns inevitably lead to conflicts and vilification of candidates and causes that don’t deserve it. Such was the case with our recently completed Evergreen Park and Recreation District election.

In 1983, the Baltimore Colts selected John Elway with the first pick in that year’s NFL draft. Elway had no interest in playing for the Colts, and said he would play professional baseball if they took him. So the Colts traded Elway to the Broncos for two players and a first-round pick in the 1984 draft. The rest is history.

Since then, Broncos drafts have been pretty ordinary. No big headlines, no huge stories.

Sometimes the story isn’t as big a deal as the story about the story. How much different would United States history look if, the day after the Watergate break-in, President Nixon had said, “Campaigns make people do crazy things,” instead of getting involved in the cover-up that led to his resignation?

While there is little doubt there is nothing in Scott McInnis’ tax returns or John Hickenlooper’s charitable contributions that rise to the level of Watergate, the principle is the same. The longer questions persist, the bigger the story gets.

On May 3, 1972, Sylvia Brockner wrote her first column for the Canyon Courier, about pine siskins, and readers flocked to her words about nature’s rhythms and the beauty of Evergreen and its surroundings.

An important election May 4 will determine the direction the Evergreen Park and Recreation District takes in future years, and may affect property taxes. Property taxes provide 41 percent of the current EPRD operating budget. The other 59 percent comes from user fees, grants, etc. EPRD costs will likely remain stable or increase. Tax revenue is projected to decline for the next two years. We consider key issues to be dealing with finances, determining the broad needs of the district (not special interests), and Buchanan Park development.

Two weeks ago, my kids returned home from school with new backpacks. The green bags — which more resembled re-usable grocery totes — touted the U.S. census, proclaiming “Be counted” in several languages, with a backdrop of multi-colored hands.

Before Coloradans went to their precinct caucuses last month, it looked like U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet and former lieutenant governor Jane Norton were on their way to meeting in a combative and expensive race for Colorado’s U.S. Senate seat. What a difference a month makes!

In many ways, the closest thing we have to a city council in Evergreen is the board of the Evergreen Park and Recreation District. While there are other special districts with elected boards here, the combination of EPRD’s mission and the facilities it manages gives it a much more overreaching presence than other districts.

In many ways, the Canyon Courier is the lifeblood of our community. The Courier is the only comprehensive source of timely information about what is happening in Evergreen and what is happening to Evergreen. Without the Courier, there would be no way for most of us to know of the many important local issues that affect our health, safety, property taxes, property values and much more. The Courier is our only timely source of information about the behavior (and misbehavior) of our elected and unelected officials at the local and county level.

With precinct caucuses now in the books, the 2010 election season is officially under way. Caucuses are an important first step in the nominating process, through which each major party selects its nominees for the general election this fall.

With the exception of presidential nominations, there isn’t much public attention given to the way parties pick their candidates. It’s as though each November we’re presented with a ballot listing a Democrat, a Republican and perhaps one or more third-party candidates, with the winner assuming public office.

With so much misinformation swirling about town, it is time to set the record straight with the facts about the Center for the Arts Evergreen and our collaboration with the Evergreen Park and Recreation District.

Dominick Paoloni will be giving President Obama a bit more time to actualize his campaign promises. He’s disappointed about what hasn’t been delivered yet — the public option, a return of civil liberties repressed during the Bush regime, and troops out of Iraq. With his expertise in finances, this Lookout Mountain resident is thinking (and that’s refreshing) about why Obama has moved so far to the right of moderate.

The great New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell has an unfailing ability to find interesting things to write about. In his recent collection of essays titled “What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures,” he explains what makes some topics so interesting. “Curiosity about the interior life of other people’s day-to-day work is one of the most fundamental of human impulses,” he writes.

We are relational beings, and we’re interested in how others live their lives.

This week marks the halfway point of the Colorado General Assembly’s 120-day 2010 session. The state’s fiscal woes have dominated the session to this point. The legislature has adopted a package of bills that raised revenues by eliminating a variety of tax exemptions as well as approving a 32-bill package that reduced spending by state agencies for the current fiscal year that ends June 30.

Last week’s shootings at Deer Creek Middle School were an awful reminder of the events at Columbine and Platte Canyon. Yet in the midst of our concern for the two wounded students, there was also cause to celebrate the heroic actions of Dr. David Benke, a math teacher whose split-second decision to tackle the shooter undoubtedly saved lives.

Victims have a champion in Evergreen resident Ann Jaramillo. Inspired by personal tragedy in 1989, Ann has helped pave the way to victim rights for the five out of six people predicted to be involved in a violent crime.

A recent story on National Public Radio suggested that people who find themselves with mortgage balances that are more than their homes are worth would be smart to stop making payments, have their homes foreclosed upon and then go buy another house in the same neighborhood based on the newly diminished housing values. They even found a contracts lawyer to say the reason there are default provisions in contracts is because defaulting on contracts is a rational option that is available to anyone who enters into any contract.